David L. Pierce
Director, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility
Mr. David L. Pierce is the Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. As WFF Director, Mr. Pierce leads NASA’s suborbital scientific research using sounding rockets, scientific balloons, airborne science aircraft, small spacecraft, and the agency’s only owned and operated launch range. Wallops, as a multi-tenant/multi-user facility, is a one-of-a-kind, unique national asset. Together with its mission partners, Wallops is a leader in providing safe and cost-effective access to space to meet government and commercial sector needs for accessing flight regimes worldwide from the Earth’s surface to the Moon and beyond.
Mr. Pierce has more than 37 years of program and project management experience at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior to his appointment in 2019 as NASA Wallops’ director, Pierce served as deputy director for Institutions, Programs, and Business Management in Goddard’s Science and Exploration Directorate (SED) from 2016 to 2018. He also served as the NASA Wallops’ Deputy Director, assisting in the management of Wallops and its program and institutional elements. Between 2011 and 2016, Pierce served as the senior Program Executive for Suborbital Research at NASA Headquarters (HQ), overseeing implementation of NASA’s Suborbital Research Program, a broad portfolio of aircraft, scientific balloons, sounding rockets, ISS payloads and small satellite research missions.
Mr. Pierce served as NASA's Balloon Program Office chief from 2004 to 2011, where he was responsible for overseeing the NASA balloon program, as well as the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF), located in Palestine, Texas. Pierce served as Project Manager within the Explorers Program from 1998 to 2004, the nation’s oldest flight program, managing University-class Explorer (UNEX) and Small Explorer (SMEX) missions. He started his career at NASA Wallops working as an aerospace engineer in the Aircraft Programs Branch, modifying research aircraft to meet Earth science community needs and serving as mission manager on airborne science field campaigns.
Mr. Pierce earned his Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from North Carolina State University in 1986, and his Master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia in 1994. He has received numerous individual and group achievement awards throughout his career, and was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Service and Exceptional Achievement Medals. Mr. Pierce is the 2021 recipient of the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award.
